Ever since the Modi government has been sworn in, there is
some great euphoria in the market. Everyone is speaking optimistically and the
promises and hopes of the people are crazy. In this melee any sane voice is
obviously hastily pushed aside. I too supported Modi over the choice we had. On
one hand we had a congress rule for ten years which by the end of their second
term was like a stand up’s comedians dream come true. We had a lovely and great
former finance minister who became possibly only non-politician PM and served
two full terms! He was just unable to stem the rot in the system and ended up
being silent and ‘status quoist’. Fingers were raised at the all-powerful party
president who it seemed controlled all the strings. Then there was the scion of
the dynasty, with Rahul who promised so much till he went on an interview with
Times Now and then he looked like a duck, with nothing to offer.
Sure I supported Modi but I also warned of the dangers of a
right wing PM. He won with an absolute majority and swept into power. I worry
and I worry. People were (are) going mad in supporting the man. He talks big,
he has these broadcasts across schools and colleges and is winning the state
elections like none other. Seemingly smart and intelligent people are being
swept by the public relations spin tsunami that is being generated. It makes me
worry a whole lot.
I have been interested in world war 2 history and after
reading up a bit on Hitler’s rise to power and his madness that led a country
into war, I see the parallels between his machinery and our PM’s. It unnerves
me. Both talk loud and full of rhetoric. They have concentration of power, big
grandiose schemes, talk tough and have huge PR machineries to support them. It
scares me. I see no action but lots of talk. Of course they also have another
issue – the Congress controls the upper house and refuses to pass the bills
creating another sort of mess, so one must need to balance that view as well.
So in many casual
meetings I sit in one side and ask polite questions to all the Modi bhakts.
Empty rhetoric must meet cold hard questions and reasoning. People who don’t tolerate
criticisms must not face criticism but questions. Questions that stem from
their rock hard support and shake their foundations. So surely, is support him
compared to the lame duck but questions must be asked. This is a democracy and the
greatest value in it is the skeptic. The loyalists has little value in a
democratic set up.
In all that the same voice is that of the RBI Governor. He writes
about how economic politics interplay for growth. He talks about the four
pillars – Rule of Law, Democratic Accountability, Strong governance along with
free markets play such an important role in a countries prosperity. And he
talks about Hitler. I am been trying to explain the Hitler example to so many people.
I keep making the same point, hitler was a tin pot dictator but he was elected
democratically and then suspended elections and then became a force onto
himself. He enjoyed the unwavering support of his people. People were ready to
die for him – in millions! You would want to read the entire text of Raghuram’s
speech here http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_SpeechesView.aspx?id=941.
He explains how having one pillar less destabilizes the entire process and puts
a country into peril. Economics and politics are completely intertwined.
Yo man! I love the skeptics. The Yo Skeptics. People who are
skeptic but move ahead. They realize that whole hearted support may be stupid
but you surely require whole hearted action. I love his ending paras as well.
“An important difference from the historical experience of other
countries is that elsewhere typically strong government has emerged there
first, and it is then restrained by rule of law and democratic accountability.
In India, we have the opposite situation today, with strong institutions like
the judiciary, opposition parties, the free press, and NGOs, whose aim is to
check government excess. However, necessary government function is sometimes
hard to distinguish from excess. We will have to strengthen government (and
regulatory) capability resisting the temptation to implant layers and layers of
checks and balances even before capacity has taken root. We must choose a happy
medium between giving the administration unchecked power and creating complete
paralysis, recognizing that our task is different from the one that confronted
the West when it developed, or even the task faced by other Asian economies.
For instance, a business approval process that mandates numerous
government surveys in remote areas should also consider our administrative
capacity to do those surveys well and on time. If it does not provide for that
capacity, it ensures there will be no movement forward. Similarly, if we create
a multiple appellate process against government or regulatory action that is
slow and undiscriminating, we contain government excess but also risk halting
necessary government actions. If the government or regulator is less effective
in preparing its case than private parties, we ensure that the appellate
process largely biases justice towards those who have the resources to use it,
rather than rectifying a miscarriage of justice. So in thinking through
reforms, we may want to move from the theoretical ideal of how a system might
work in a country with enormous administrative capacity, to how it would work
in the actual Indian situation. Let me emphasize, we need “checks and balance”,
but we should ensure a balance of checks. We cannot have escaped from the
License Permit Raj only to end up in the Appellate Raj!”
I tried to explain some part of the speech to Jispa
yesterday, and we were having a decent conversation on this when Jasmine ticked
us off and told us to sleep. We have a skeptic at home as well :)
